Contact : Steve Tanner, Javier Bracamonte, Patrick Stadelmann

Imaging and electronics

Images are one of the most important ways we have for communication. From a technical perspective, working with images, or image sequences, implies dealing with huge quantities of information, usually 100 times more than dealing with audio information. For instance, a high-definition television restitutes 40 millions of pixels per second, while an audio Hi-Fi system handles only 40 thousands of samples during the same amount of time. This quasi astronomic amount of information can however be treated by electronic circuits, thanks to their astonishing capabilities in terms of processing, storage and transmission.

IMT research in imaging

The Electronic and Signal Processing Laboratory (ESPLAB) has been active during two decades in research activities aiming at improving the capability of integrated circuits to process imaging information. The current activities in this field are:

		Image acquisition: CMOS image sensors Design of CMOS image sensor architectures for low power operation - Design of Analog to Digital converters for video signals - Design of digital logic for circuit management and control - Design of building blocks for image sensors, like PLLs, voltage references, etc. Contact : Steve Tanner
		Image Pre-processing and Post-processing Correction of defective pixels and other sensor non-idealities - Color correction and interpolation (de-mosaic) - Improvement of image quality - Various filtering operations such as re-sampling, sharpening, histogram equalization, etc. Contact : Steve Tanner, Javier Bracamonte, Patrick Stadelmann
		Digital image and video compression Development of image and video compression algorithms for specific applications. Optimization of industry standard algorithms (JPEG, MPEG-x, H.26x) for low-cost, low-power implementations. Software, hardware, and multimedia DSP implementations. Developments of VLSI architectures for image and video compression engines for portable devices. Contact : Javier Bracamonte
		Digital image and video processing in the compressed domain Development of image and video processing algorithm operating directly in the compressed domain (JPEG, MPEG-x, H.26x) : image analysis, image matching, image search and retrieval, change detection for videosurveillance applications, etc. Contact : Javier Bracamonte